Nestorian aqueduct in Çukurca
HAKKARİ (DİHA) - One of the most important remaining artefacts from the Nestorians, known as the first Christians in Mesopotamia, is to be found in the district of Çukurca (Çele) in Hakkari province. The aqueduct is in the Sidan valley 45 minutes from the district centre of Çukurca, reached by a footpath.
The aqueduct was built against the rocks on the north side of the valley and is part of a canal that used to convey water 5 kilometres from a stream to orchards at Narlı. Traces of the canal are still visible, but most of it has disappeared. The aqueduct is 68 metres long and 10 metres high, with a canal with 1 metre high walls on top of the aqueduct. The stones used in the construction of the aqueduct were sealed using mortar.
Stream still irrigates rice fields
The aqueduct is the only when in the area and was built by the Nestorians near the Bey church. The stream which supplied the water carried by the aqueduct is still used today to water rice fields. While the exact construction date of the aqueduct is not known, and there is no inscription to offer a clue, it is thought to date from the Middle Ages.
Nearly a hundred thousand Nestorians were massacred or displaced
The Nestorians, whose ethnic origin was Assyrian and are known as Nestorians due to schisms in the early centuries of Christianity, have left behind them various artefacts. Until 1840 they lived in harmony with the other peoples in the region, until the onset of the idea of the nation state and capitalist modernity led to conflict between peoples which in time turned into massacres.
Background
Between 1843 and 1846 Kurdish chiefs Bedirkhan Bey, Müküs Bey Mahmut Khan and Nurullah Bey combined, raiding Nestorian villages and massacring, according to some sources, over 20,000 Nestorians. The capitalist nation state understanding provoked the Kurdish, Armenian and Nestorian massacres. In the 1920s the new Turkish Republic slaughtered the remaining Nestorians on the pretext of an uprising. The surviving Nestorians took refuge in Mosul in Iraq and in Urmia in Iran. Of the around 100,000 Nestorians who lived in the region in the 1800s, all that remains are artefacts such as the aqueduct near Çukurca.
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